Twenty Seven Million Dollars
by AccidentalNaps
Summary: Dr Sid Hammerback is having trouble concentrating now that he's a millionaire. A one-shot based on 08x13.


**A/N:So, I love Sid. And the whole thing with the Hammerback Sleeper was brilliant. And so I wanted to play with it. **

**In my head Sid is divorced with three grown up daughters, and I'm not sure if that's from the show or from fanfictions, but that's the scenario I'm playing with.**

**Thanks to Mav32 and Swarovski who both played a part in coaxing this out of me.**

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_Twenty seven million dollars._

Dr Sid Hammerback's day was often accompanied by an internal stream of consciousness that handed him nuggets of information linked to the case he had on his table, or an aspect of the conversation he was part of. Like a conveyor belt through his brain it shovelled out piles and piles of seemingly irrelevant trivia for Sid to pick and choose the finest examples and share them with the company. Most often, the names of the victims would prompt a list of famous people in history with the same name, and then notable characters in literature with the same name. Yet rather than reeling off these lists to whichever CSI came to get his report it would remain internal, looping round his brain harmlessly like elevator music. Sid had often seen Marty Pino working with earphones in, listening to his iPod while he worked. Sid had no need for earphones when he had his own way of focussing: his carousel of trivia.

_That's 2.7 billion cents._

Only, today, the elevator music wasn't calming or entertaining, and rather than helping him focus, it twitched his limbs erratically and made his brain skitter all over, like a dog running over tiles. Sid had come to find that the methodic precision of autopsy was the best way to clear his head, and calm his nerves, but because an unsteady hand can alter wound tracts, lose trace, or damage evidence, he'd kept himself away from work.

_In single bills it would weigh 27 metric tonnes._

The body on the table before lunch was his ideal case: two potential CODs and it was _his_ job to scientifically prove which was the ultimate cause of death – exsanguination from the arrow to the chest, or the crushed trachea from strangulation. It would occupy the rest of his day, and if he couldn't figure it out by the time he went home then it would be distracting him for the rest of the night too. He was dying to figuratively sink his teeth into the riddle that lay before him, if only he could halt the jarring train of thoughts that was thundering distractingly round his head.

_Which is 29.7 tons._

He could probably manage to work beneath the barrage of trivia relating to his windfall, if only he could articulate some of it. The advice of his lawyer silenced him, and every time he felt the words "twenty seven million dollars" bubbling up from his windpipe, he would unclip his glasses, and clip them back on again with a low _snap_.

_That's also the weight of the T-34 tank, designed by Ukrainian Mikhail Koshkin in 1937 and used by the Red Army, and was arguably the most effective, efficient, and influential tank design of World War II._

He had to bite his tongue. He hadn't even told his daughters yet, just so that they didn't tell their mother, he certainly couldn't tell anyone at work. He would endure the prolonged looks when they thought he couldn't see, and the worriedly exchanged whispers about his absence and uncharacteristic behaviour. He'd requested a minimal tech presence, just in case he couldn't bite back every trivial titbit his brain summoned. He was managing to keep his outbursts to a minimum until Mac and Jo came to inquire about their vic, and then the stream became a flood, and the barrage of information drove him to distraction.

_Twenty seven million dollars could buy 54000 iPads._

He was strangely relieved it was Jo who confronted him about his behaviour, as though he already knew he would let her in on his secret. Her easy, infectious smile was irresistible to Sid, and he felt that he intrigued the Virginian as much as she had bewitched him. He was resolute that he wouldn't tell anyone at work, but he didn't feel obliged to talk to Jo. Opening up to her was always simpler than it should have been for two people who were _just_ colleagues.

_Or 5.4 million mosquito nets_.

When he finally said the words that had been stewing inside his head for a week he felt better than he thought he could. After she left, and the initial elation subsided, the flood dried up, returning to a harmless trickle of entertaining factoids, and his limbs were still.

Jo returned after her shift to make sure he was okay. He'd shown her the piano, and encouraged by her joy at his purchase he'd told her about the T-34 tank and its Ukrainian designer. Her eyes shone and her laugh was rich and sincere, more musical to Sid than the impressive grand piano he sat behind.

He might have been able to buy a great deal of things with twenty seven million dollars and it did change his circumstances, but perched on a piano stool in his autopsy room running his untrained fingers clumsily over heavy ivory keys, Sid Hammerback would not have changed the fact that he was sat beside Jo Danville

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**A/N: It's amazing what you can find on the internet, Wikipedia, and fivecentnickel gave me Sid's factoids.**


End file.
